


An Avatar of Mars

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Terraforming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The latest Avatar meets the second first; or, wherein I perhaps take the genre of 'Future Fic' a bit too far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Avatar of Mars

Huo Hsing, they called it. The name meant _Fire Star._

Poets throughout the ages wrote of its peculiar red light. Sages and charlatans alike divined meaning from its dance in the heavens. Astronomers tallied careful notes of the planet's motion and divined the laws of celestial mechanics. Yet for all that, for a long time, Huo Hsing was simply another point of light among thousands in the night sky.

But it would become more.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

There would be a press event later, with pics and vids aplenty to be streamed back home from the United Huo Hsing Sphere Republic, but that spectacle could wait a few hours. For now it was just the two of them alone. Him, the greying airbender. Her, the beanpole schoolgirl. Together they strolled down the green aisles of some deserted hydroponics station, trading small talk as they sized up one another.

How was his voyage? (Long, but good for catching up on his reading.) Was he adjusting to the lower gravity all right? (Yes.) How were her academic studies going? (Well enough.) Had she decided on a major yet? (She was torn between International Relations and Gengineering.) What did she do for fun? (Exercise. Fortune-telling.) Did her bending tutors needle her as much to constantly practice as his had?

It was the subject of bending that finally broke through the thin, icy skin of tension between them.

"You know," Monk Yinsen remarked to his counterpart, "it's strange. I've talked to other Avatars about my life before, but they were always dead."

Rei Yoruno, the first Avatar of Huo Hsing, asked, "What's it like?"

"No different from this."

That disappointed her. Or maybe he was misreading her body language. Like nearly all those born and raised in the lighter gravity characteristic of their system's fourth planet, Rei had to stoop over to meet a third worlder's eyes during conversation.

Rei said, in an even tone, "I'm glad, then. I wanted to have this sort of thing at least once." _In case being the Avatar of this world isn't the same as being the one of yours_ , she didn't add.

It was a metaphysical question that had raged across the two worlds of humanity since Rei Yoruno had accidentally bent fire and air in gym class. Huo Hsing had been an empty waste until the first permanent research base had brought the cycle of life and death to it a century ago. Had the planet no intrinsic spirit until then? Or had a dormant one been woken? And what was its character compared to that of the homeworld's?

All interesting questions, but they weren't academic to the girl whose spirit faced immortality or oblivion depending on their outcome.

Yinsen had no answers for the girl, but there was one thing he did have. Raising his arm, he offered his hand to his fellow Avatar. "Then know I'm pleased to talk with you, Avatar Yoruno."

She stared at his calloused palm, unsure of herself. Being the Avatar of this red planet, Yinsen knew, didn't carry the same weight he possessed back home. Perhaps it was a lack of history, or may just the lack of firepower. Rei Yoruno wasn't going to bore moholes into the mantle and single-handedly bend the ice caps into oceans like he soon would. She had no past lives to call upon for power or guidance. But, Yinsen liked to think, she did have a brother.

Slowly, Rei Yoruno took his hand. "And I you, Avatar Yinsen."


End file.
